Syrian forces have retreated from a rebel-held town under a local cease-fire, residents said on Thursday, but deadly violence raged on elsewhere as a month-long mandate for Arab peace monitors in Syria was expiring. Twenty people, including two army officers, were reported killed across Syria, adding to a death toll of more than 600 since the Arab League observers arrived.
An armed insurgency is taking hold in some areas, hardening what began 10 months ago as a mostly peaceful struggle against President Bashar al-Assad's authoritarian rule. Residents of Zabadani said troops and tanks that had besieged the insurgent-controlled town had pulled back after a deal to end days of fighting, according to an opposition leader.
Dozens of armoured vehicles that had encircled Zabadani, a hill resort near the Lebanese border, withdrew to garrisons 8 km (5 miles) away, Kamal al-Labwani told Reuters. The Arab League monitoring mandate was expiring on Thursday night, with Arab foreign ministers due to weigh their next move in Cairo on Sunday. They are at odds over how to respond to the turmoil in which thousands of people have been killed.
"They are in a big mess," a source close to the Cairo-based League said. "They are running out of options." An Arab League source said this week Syria might let the monitors stay on, but without any broadening of their mandate. The leader of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood said world powers should pile diplomatic pressure on Assad and set up a no-fly zone and "safe zones" to help the opposition.
"The international community should take the right position ... They should fully isolate this regime, pull out their ambassadors and expel the regime's ambassadors," Mohammad Shaqfa told Reuters in a telephone interview. "The country is capable of overcoming the current conditions and building a strong Syria," Assad told a delegation calling itself the Arab People's Initiative for Fighting Foreign Intervention in Syria, the state news agency SANA reported.
The UN Security Council is split over Syria, with Russia declaring it will work with China to block any move to authorise military intervention. Western powers have acknowledged that a Libya-style campaign in Syria would be fraught with danger, but want the council at least to condemn Assad's repression and impose sanctions. Reliable casualty figures are hard to come by in Syria, where media access has been limited and the outside world has had to piece together a picture from the conflicting accounts of the parties to an inchoate and increasingly bloody struggle.
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